Common Argument #2: Rand Paul makes the Republican Party more appealing to minorities.

Your response: I’ll give you this: He did give a speech at Howard University, something most Republicans probably wouldn’t, and don’t, do. Even if his speech wasn’t well-received, it was a nice effort.

But this is a man who made a name for himself by doubting the merits of the Civil Rights Act. In particular, he doubted the part that prohibits businesses from discriminating based on race, saying he “would have tried to modify that” part of the law. He also wrote a letter outlining his hesitations to the Fair Housing Act:

A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.

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That’s an unambiguous assertion that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate based on race — at least, in a “free society.” Oh, and there was the time he wrote a book with a white supremacist, then hired him on staff, then defended him when people started pointing out that he was a racist.

There’s also the fact that millennials, when polled, just don’t seem to like Paul very much: A FiveThirtyEight analysis found that Paul’s support trails by about 17 percent amongst young Americans when compared with the population at large.

Your response: That may have been true at one point: Paul was the scrappy underdog outsider during his first Senate run, and vanquished the chosen candidate of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But once he was in the Senate, Paul quickly buddied up with McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership, and a party strategist recently praised him for “his quick willingness to get on board” with the rest of the GOP.

Here’s Paul during the government shutdown fight, plotting strategy with McConnell when he doesn’t realize the microphone and camera are still on.

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Paul tows the GOP party line on almost every issue there is: Taxes, immigration, health care, education, job creation, abortion, gay marriage and so on. And while he has disagreed with the GOP on some foreign policy issues, even that’s changing: Paul now supports US aid to Israel and has introduced legislation to declare war on ISIS, which be America’s first formal declaration of war since 1942.

On almost every substantive issue, Rand Paul is, reliably and thoroughly, a Republican. Being hated by John McCain doesn’t make him a rebel.